The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918 Page 11
Howard Kelly was having better luck and was playing the part of shadowing with skill and tenacity. Earlier in the night, in this pursuit within a pursuit, and when close to the Italian coast, the Gloucester had been forced to steer straight for the mighty Goeben in order to get between her and the shore and keep her in sight in the failing light. The Breslau, fearful of the Gloucester’s torpedoes, made threatening passes, and at any moment the German battle-cruiser might have opened fire and blown the relatively small cruiser out of the water.
The bright moonlight was an assistance and a danger in about equal parts. Kelly could keep his watch at a greater range but the visibility would speed his destruction if the Goeben opened fire. All through the night, in spite of the Goeben’s efforts to jam his transmissions, Kelly continued to report the speed, course and position of the battle-cruiser.
The next day, off the Gulf of Kalamata, the Breslau took positive steps to deal with the shadower, dropping astern of the Goeben and crossing the Gloucester’s course repeatedly as if dropping mines. Kelly answered by opening fire at 11,500 yards with his forward 6-inch gun. The Breslau instantly answered with salvoes of rapid and extremely accurate fire. Kelly replied again by increasing speed, turning, and closing the range so that he could employ his full broadside. This movement finally provoked Souchon into action.
From the British cruiser’s bridge the Goeben, no more than a distant smudge in the heat haze, could be seen to turn. Pin-point glows marked the instant of firing. Almost half a minute later, tall white fountains appeared in the sea. Kelly turned away, having accomplished his purpose of provoking the Goeben and forcing her to turn. At 2.45 p.m. Kelly signalled to Milne: ‘Have engaged at long range with Breslau and retreated when Goeben turned. I am now following again.’ Kelly’s retreat was wise. A single hit from the Goeben might, at best, slow the Gloucester so that she could no longer continue her prime role of shadowing and reporting.
Two hours later, short of coal and with orders from Milne not to go farther than Cape Matapan, Captain Howard Kelly broke off after observing Souchon’s course into the Aegean. At 4 p.m. he signalled, ‘Enemy’s ships in Cervi Channel steering east 15 knots. I am off Cape Matapan and returning N55W, 15 knots.’
Kelly could do no more, and what he had done was brilliant. ‘The Goeben could have caught and sunk the Gloucester at any time,’ ran the Admiralty minute on his report, ‘… She was apparently deterred by the latter’s boldness, which gave the impression of support close at hand. The combination of audacity with restraint, unswerving attention to the principal military object… constitute a naval episode which may justly be regarded as a model.’
The other side of the picture is dark by contrast. Rear-Admiral Troubridge had under his command the only ships that could have, at worst, damaged and delayed the Goeben’s flight, and with skill and luck might have sent her to the bottom, with a well-co-ordinated gun and torpedo attack. Although they pre-dated the dreadnought battle-cruiser, Troubridge’s armoured cruisers packed a heavy punch with their biggest guns. The oldest had been commissioned nine years earlier, the Defence and Warrior were only six years old.
Defence-Warrior-Black Prince-Duke of Edinburgh
Average displacement: 14,000 tons
Total weight of broadside: 8,480 pounds
Maximum speed: 22-23 knots
Armoured belt: 6 inches
Goeben
Displacement: 23,000 tons
Total weight of broadside: 8,272 pounds
Maximum speed: 28 knots
Armoured belt: 11 inches
Both Souchon and Troubridge had a light cruiser under their command, and Troubridge would soon enjoy the advantage of having destroyers with him. On the night of 6-7 August, thanks to the Gloucester’s shadowing and reporting, Troubridge knew the Goeben’s position, course, and speed throughout the hours of darkness. His first mistake was to interpret the Gloucester’s urgent signal, received at 11.08 p.m. that the Goeben was altering course southward, as a feint, when in fact Souchon’s earlier turn to the north-east had been an attempt to mislead his pursuers. As a consequence Troubridge lost an hour before continued signals from the Gloucester appeared to confirm that the Goeben was not making for the Adriatic. At a few minutes after midnight, Troubridge ordered his 1st Cruiser Squadron to alter course south.
For the ensuing four hours, the big armoured cruisers steamed south at close to their maximum speed, with the prospect of action by daybreak in the men’s mind: the manoeuvring, the gunfire, the impact of enemy shells, the smoke and deafening noise – all the sound and fury towards which their professional lives had gravitated during the years leading to this war. Of the 3,000 or so men under Troubridge’s command, there was probably not a stoker or a commander who had not rehearsed in his mind the moment of contact.
At 2.54 a.m. Troubridge signalled the Kelly brothers in their respective light cruisers: ‘1st Cruiser Squadron position 2.30 a.m. 38° 25′N, 20° 0′E, course south 20 knots. Am endeavouring to cross Goeben’s bows at 6 a.m.’ Brave words. In the message there was no suggestion of failing to challenge Souchon, any more than there had been earlier when Troubridge had prepared to cut off the Goeben in the Adriatic. Under the critical circumstances of the past hours and days, calculations had surely been made of the relative strength of the four armoured cruisers and the single battle-cruiser; contingency plans drawn up; methods of attack discussed in consultation with his captains.
Later, Troubridge was to claim that his decision to attack was ‘a desperate one’ made in the face of clear orders, by his immediate superior and by the Admiralty, not to engage ‘a superior force’.
What was ‘a superior force’? Was it a battle-cruiser in company with a light cruiser with 4.1-inch guns? There was no doubt of the answer in the mind of Troubridge’s flag-captain, who always gave the impression that he knew everything. At 2.45 a.m. Troubridge was in the Defence’s chart room when Wray came in. He was clearly disturbed as he asked at once, ‘Are you going to fight, sir? Because if so the squadron ought to know.’
The Admiral replied, ‘Yes, I know it is wrong but I cannot have the name of the whole Mediterranean Squadron stink.’
Fawcet Wray had done his sums and did not like this answer. Three-quarters of an hour later he again approached Troubridge and told him he did not fancy the prospect of taking on the Goeben. ‘Neither do I; but why?’ asked the Admiral, who, according to later testimony, was clearly worried.
Captain Wray had given much thought to the problem, and now (seemingly for the first time and within two and a half hours of the interception time) he explained to the Admiral how the Goeben would circle round the squadron at her superior speed ‘at some range outside 16,000 yards which her guns would carry and which your guns will not. It seems to me’, he continued, ‘it is likely to be the suicide of your squadron.’
Troubridge, already half won over, said lamely, ‘I cannot turn away now, think of my pride.’ Wray was ready with the noble answer: ‘Has your pride got anything to do with this, sir? It is your country’s welfare which is at stake.’
Troubridge called for his navigator and asked him if there was any chance of the squadron closing in to the range of its 9.2-inch guns. He was told that there was no chance whatsoever. A few minutes after 4 a.m. Troubridge called off the interception. He was in tears as Wray remarked with gravity, ‘Admiral, that is the bravest thing you have ever done in your life.’
At 4.49 a.m. Troubridge told Milne that he had called off the chase and requested instructions. He received a dusty answer. ‘Why did you not continue to cut off Goeben?’ Milne asked, well aware that ‘chase’ was an inappropriate word. ‘She only going 17 knots, and so important to bring her to action.’
For the first of numerous exhausting times, Troubridge gave his reasons at about 8.30 a.m. on 7 August: ‘With visibility at the time [he signalled] I could have been sighted from twenty to twenty-five miles away and could never have got nearer unless Goeben wished to bring me to action whi
ch she could have done under circumstances most advantageous to her. I could never have brought her to action. I had hoped to have engaged her at three-thirty in the morning in dim light but had gone north first with the object of engaging her in the entrance to the Adriatic.
I was too late to intercept her when she altered course to the southward. In view of the immense importance of victory or defeat at such early stage of a war I would consider it a great imprudence to place squadron in such a position as to be picked off at leisure and sunk while unable to effectively reply. The decision is not the easiest of the two to make I am well aware.’
Meanwhile, far to the south-cast the Gloucester continued her hazardous shadowing and reporting. But nobody seemed any longer to care.
At Malta, 460 miles to the west, Admiral Milne continued his coaling. The Indomitable could have sailed on her own and many hours before the other two battle-cruisers. in spite of some boiler defects which Milne used as an alibi later. He finally cleared Valetta harbour with his three 12-inch-gunned ships in the early hours of the morning of 8 August, shaping course for Cape Matapan where the German force had last been sighted some eight hours earlier by the Gloucester. Still under the impression that the Goeben would eventually reverse course for the western Mediterranean and the Atlantic, he did not hurry, and merely cruised along awaiting intelligence from the Admiralty. When it came it was of a critical nature and demanded an instant response. ‘Commence hostilities against Austria’, it ran.
Milne at once altered course northwards in order to concentrate his force with Troubridge’s and ‘watch the Adriatic’. The Goeben was momentarily forgotten in this new critical turn of events and Milne anticipated having to face the full might of the Austrian Fleet, of untried quality but material strength greater than his own. From possession of overwhelming strength against a single German ship, he was reduced to conducting arithmetic to a reverse formula.
Four hours later he was told from London that the earlier message was a false alarm, although the situation with Austria remained critical. What had happened was typical of the mixture of accidents and follies, clashed with both courage and caution, that marked the Goeben business from beginning to end. The ‘Commence hostilities…’ signal had been merely a contingency message prepared in case the worst happened. An Admiralty clerk had found it lying in a tray, and recognizing its urgency, he had despatched it forthwith on his own initiative. At 1.45 p.m. on 8 August, Milne’s flagship took in: ‘Negative my telegram hostilities against Austria. Acknowledge. Urgent.’
Leaving Troubridge to ‘guard’ the Adriatic (what he would have done against three new Austrian dreadnoughts when a single German one was too much for him no one explained), Milne proceeded east at no more than 10 knots, still concerned more with the Goeben when she turned west again, and with guarding the approaches to the Suez Canal than in her rapid pursuit.
Souchon had, in fact, coaled at record speed from a collier at the island of Denusa in the Aegean, and on 10 August, with British wireless signals ringing loudly in his ears to indicate how close his pursuers were, he raced for the Dardanelles. He had been warned that, after all, he might not gain immediate entry from the Turks, but so desperate was his plight that he approached anyway. The Goeben and Breslau anchored off Cape Helles at 5 p.m. on 10 August, and Souchon called fix a pilot to guide him through the minefields. A boat immediately complied, and he was soon making his slow and stately way up the Dardanelles to Constantinople.
Within hours the news had been flashed to Milne. He responded predictably for a C.-in-C. who had been given no hint that neutral Turkey could be the enemy’s destination, and whose own powers of deduction and conclusion were limited. He put the blame squarely, and equally, on Troubridge for his failure to intercept and the Admiralty for misleading him.
The escape of the Goeben was not at first regarded by the general public as a great naval disaster. The effects of the directions and misdirections of the Admiralty, the blinkered vision and lack of clear thinking of Milne, the inadequate performance of his second in command, were transformed by the popular Press and its readers into a characteristic British naval ‘sweeping of the seas’ operation. It was widely believed that within a few days from the opening of hostilities a powerful German force, arrogantly assuming it could challenge the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, had scurried for cover, fearful of interfering with French troop movements in the western Mediterranean. When the fact was learned that the Goeben and Breslau had been cravenly transferred to the Turkish Navy, whose flag now flew from the ships, this led to a further sense of satisfaction.
The implications behind this last act proved to be profound and disturbing. Within days of the loss of two of her dreadnoughts to Britain, Turkey found herself presented with two modern German men o’war. British naval mission officers were replaced by Germans on board Turkish ships, and on 30 October Turkey, under extreme German military and diplomatic pressure, joined the Central Powers in their war against France, Britain, and Russia. The failure of Troubridge’s squadron to prevent the Goeben’s escape (to damage and slow her, forcing her to seek a neutral port, would have been enough) led directly to the Dardanelles campaign, the isolation of Russia, and a grave loss of British prestige. A steady flow of arms through the Black Sea would have been bound to stiffen Russian resistance morally as well as militarily, and might even have prevented the collapse on the eastern front and the Communist revolution that followed in 1917.
Never has the meaning of sea power been more clearly spelled out than in the Mediterranean during those hectic few days of August 1914, when a single well-aimed heavy shell could have changed the direction of twentieth-century history.
At home the Navy was not deceived for one minute by the popular claims of success. The shock of the failure was expressed by the First Sea Lord. ‘Not one of the excuses which Ad. Troubridge gives can be accepted for one moment’, charged Battenberg ‘… The escape of the Goeben must ever remain a shameful episode in the war.’
Amongst the better informed there was not a moment of doubt about the identity of the culprits. Fisher, who regarded Milne’s ability as nil and thought he was ‘a serpent of the lowest order’ declared in a letter that ‘Personally I should have shot Sir Berkeley Milne.’ And to this same friend he added, that Milne ‘had no excuse whatever for not surrounding Messina with all his entire force right round the harbour mouth – CLOSE UP! as if international law mattered a d—n!! and the Italians would have loved him for ever!’(2)
The Court of Inquiry set up by the Admiralty also had no doubt that Troubridge should have engaged the Goeben. His failure was ‘deplorable and contrary to the tradition of the British Navy’. The Court judged that he ‘had a very fair chance of at least delaying – Goeben by materially damaging her’. As a result of these findings, a court martial became essential, and this was convened at Portland on board HMS Bulwark from 5 to 9 November 1914. Cowardice was not charged. What was to be decided was whether or not Troubridge did ‘from negligence or through other default, forbear to pursue the chase of His Imperial German Majesty’s ship Goeben, being an enemy then flying’.
Troubridge was brilliantly defended by Leslie Scott KC, a future Lord Justice of Appeal, and much advantage for the unfortunate Admiral was gained by citing the clear instructions from the Admiralty not to engage a superior enemy, and from Milne’s orders to guard the Adriatic. Troubridge also claimed that the following exchange between himself and his C.-in-C. had taken place at Malta at 2 August:
Troubridge: ‘You know, sir, that I consider a battle cruiser a superior force to a cruiser squadron, unless they can get within their range of her.’
Milne: ‘That question won’t arise as you will have the Indomitable and Indefatigable with you.’
The Court acquitted Troubridge on the evidence that he was only carrying out orders from the Admiralty via Milne that ‘the First Cruiser Squadron and Gloucester are not to get seriously engaged with superior force’. The only ‘superior force�
�� was the Goeben, so by implication Troubridge’s claim that he could never hope to sink the German ship was also the Admiralty’s view.
Milne felt not a breath of direct or official criticism and the Court ‘fully and honourably’ acquitted Troubridge. Fawcet Wray gave evidence but was not implicated in any charge. But all three officers were broken. Milne never received the appointment he had been expecting and was left unemployed on half pay until the end of the war. Fisher always referred to him scathingly as ‘Sir Berkeley Goeben’, and his name was widely vilified. Troubridge, in view of his acquittal, could not be treated so harshly by the Admiralty and was given various commands, all beneath his reasonable expectations, and never served at sea again. Fawcet Wray was, quite simply, ostracized by the entire service and not employed at all for some time, although he later made amends at the Dardanelles and was awarded the DSO.
The Admiralty, which was directly and indirectly the most guilty party in the fiasco, received not a word of official criticism.
A list of guilty men must include Churchill, Troubridge, Wray, and Milne. Churchill had been a brilliant peacetime First Lord for the needs of the Royal Navy between 1912 and 1914. He had made multitudinous enemies, caused massive offence, and thrown his weight about like none of his predecessors, who had not attempted to trespass beyond the accepted role and responsibilities of the political head of the Navy. But he had completed Fisher’s reforms, initiated many more, and brought into being the Naval War Stall’ that was long overdue.
In the highly authoritative judgement of Lieutenant-Commander Peter Kemp, Churchill should not attract as much blame as he has suffered for his part in the affair. ‘I suggest it was the Admiralty, rather than Churchill personally, that was one of the chief culprits [he writes], although Churchill in a way must take some of the blame as the political boss of: and therefore responsible for, his department. A lot of the silly signals sent out by the Admiralty did not emanate from Churchill personally. If I had to list the guilty men in order of culpability I would put Milne at the top. He was the C.-in-C. and had the duty to assess the situation on the spot and act accordingly. He had the right and power to ignore Admiralty signals, knowing that the Admiralty would back him up. Every C.-in-C. knows this, it goes automatically with the appointment. Of course the Admiralty has the power of dismissal as the ultimate sanction if the C.-in-C. makes a balls of it. This is one of the recognized risks of the game. Milne’s handling of the Fleet, especially after learning that the Goeben was at Messina on 5 August, was inept in the extreme.